Israel must protect its citizens. No one else will

Jack O’Neill ( Letters, April 23) says that Dr Kevin McCarthy is wrong for supporting Israel’s right to annex the Golan Heights, because the UN has declared Israel’s actions to be against ‘international law’. 

The UN ignores the fact that in every war between Arab states and Israel, either Israel was attacked first or has responded to a legitimate casus belli.

In a national newspaper last year, Peter Murtagh reported on Irish Army peacekeepers based in the Golan Heights. He wrote that the Golan Heights provide a “commanding position from which Israel was permanently vulnerable”.